BOSTON — Eduardo Nunez and Rafael Devers ended up being the bats the Boston Red Sox needed — and they came a few days before the trade deadline.
Red Sox President of Baseball Operations Dave Dombrowski had a hole to fill at third base after the club released Pablo Sandoval last month. Just before Monday’s cutoff for making deals without waivers, Dombrowski opted to shore up the bullpen by acquiring Addison Reed from the New York Mets.
Dombrowski was questioned for not chasing a bat. Turns out, he already had two that have sparked the lineup and put Boston back on top of the AL East.
Nunez, picked up in a trade from San Francisco for two minor league pitchers on July 25, and 20-year-old highly touted prospect Devers have brought an immediate boost.
In the two games post deadline — albeit a small sample size — the Red Sox beat the AL Central-leading Cleveland Indians twice and put up their highest two-game run total since the first week of July when they were in the middle of a season-high six-game game winning streak.
The defending AL East champs watched the New York Yankees acquire starting pitchers Sonny Gray and Jamie Garcia at the deadline after they fixed a hole at third base by adding Todd Frazier and adding bullpen help.
For Dombrowski, his offensive moves were complete.
“We got Nunez,” Dombrowski said. “It’s amazing how when you don’t get a guy on the deadline day, people forget that you got him.”
Nunez is batting .500 (11 for 22) with two homers and nine RBIs in five games. Devers is hitting .429 (12 of 28) with two homers and four RBIs in seven since being promoted from Triple-A.
Devers has the second-most hits by a Red Sox player in his first seven games since Olaf Henriksen had 14 in 1911.
The start by the pair forced manager John Farrell to shift the order on deadline day, moving Nunez to third and Devers from the bottom to sixth. Struggling hitters Xander Bogaerts and Mitch Moreland were dropped to seventh and eighth, respectively.
SERIES FINALE RAINED OUT — The game between the Cleveland Indians and Red Sox scheduled for Wednesday night was postponed because of rain.
A makeup date was set for Aug. 14 at Fenway Park, starting at 6:10 p.m.
Thunderstorms came into the area around 4 o’clock. The grounds crew never took the tarp off before the game was called more than two hours after it was supposed to begin.
The Red Sox won both games of the abbreviated series, posting a dramatic 12-10 victory Tuesday night on Christian Vazquez’s game-ending, three-run homer with two outs in the ninth off closer Cody Allen.
Boston opens a four-game series at home against the Chicago White Sox on Thursday night.
AL Central-leading Cleveland heads home and begins a four-game series against the Yankees on Thursday night. Newly acquired right-hander Sonny Gray (6-5, 3.43 ERA) is slated to make his debut for New York.